by Thea Devine
Because that was not going to last.
“I can be filling,” Jed murmured.
I pretended not to hear him. I thought if I concentrated on the good news, on when and how to tell Paula, what I’d said would go away. Still, how could I tell Paula I had lunch with Jed?
But doesn’t everybody get good news over lunch?
Besides, she was on a business trip.
Oh, Lord. I could barely concentrate on what I was doing the whole afternoon thinking about the reality of a “Grab-and-Go Gourmet” cookbook. I needed an agent. No, I needed to review the terms of the contract and discuss it with Jed’s lawyer before I signed anything.
The contract was waiting for me, Paula had not arrived home from the airport, and for the first time in a long time, I had some privacy. I needed it to absorb the sixteen pages of every-contingency-possible exceptions. There was no money offered, only the right of first look and first refusal for my proposal.
This was more than I had expected. I felt as if I was inching toward something momentous, life changing, and it had nothing to do with guys or sex.
How refreshing.
The Guy Diet works in mysterious ways.
As did Jed. The minute I had read through the contract a second time and taken notes and written down questions, my cell rang.
Answer it or not?
I decided not—given that comment this afternoon. But then he texted: They got you. See NY by Day.
I rang him back as I booted up my laptop and pulled up the Website.
“I am so sorry.”
“Why? It’s a really awful picture of you and a fudgy blind item.”
“You must have great spin doctors on retainer.”
“The Costigans don’t like negative publicity,” Jed said gently.
I accessed the “NY by Day” column in the News, and yes, there I was, with my mad mask on and an innocuous line about the mystery nobody who’d just been rejected by the playboy scion of what socially prominent family.
“It’s horrible,” I said miserably.
“It’ll go away,” Jed said comfortingly. “Now, can we get to the phone-sex part?”
“Hello…Guy Diet.”
“I’m not just any guy.”
That was for sure. I didn’t know this Jed, the guy-opposite-meat-lunch Jed with the impeccably tailored suit, impeccable manners and the improbable aura of success surrounding him.
“Right—you’re the playboy scion, with the millions tucked in your back pocket with which you can continue playing.”
“What if I want to play with you?”
That was breath-stopping. “You couldn’t possibly. We barely know each other.”
“I like the bare part. We could get bare and get to know each other better. And throw in a few kisses while we’re at it.”
I swallowed hard. Jed didn’t play fair. “Not on my Guy Diet.”
“But I’m the free ingredient.”
“Right, the one with no calories, no fat, that’s nonfilling, with no substance,” I retorted.
“That means there’s always room for…”
“I’m not breaking The Diet.”
“I don’t see how phone sex breaks The Diet.”
“It’s no guys. Not some no guys, all no guys.”
“I am not some no guy,” Jed said severely. “Or just any old guy.”
“I know,” I said regretfully, “but I have standards to maintain.”
“Me, too,” Jed said, flipping my abrasiveness back at me.
Ouch.
“Talk to you soon,” he added and the phone clicked off.
Code that “Why talk to you ever again?”
Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut sometimes? How important was this damned diet thing anyway?
I had to do some really deep soul-searching on that.
Took me about thirty seconds. Playing with Jed would not get me what I wanted: the relationship with got-your-back guy, which I was not willing, I discovered, to compromise for the momentary thrill of having sex with Jed. Or even kissing him.
And over and above that, it seemed as if the more I held him at bay, the more intense Jed became.
Well. Who would’ve thought I’d have principles, goals and standards? And be willing to stick to them? And keep Jed Costigan so stirred up?
This really has been a great summer so far.
THIS REALLY HAD BEEN a lousy summer so far, despite the fact Jed would pocket major money from the newspaper sale. Everything else was all to hell because he couldn’t budge Lo from her damned diet and her ridiculous stance protecting Paula.
It was all about Paula. It made no sense, and he was a make-sense kind of guy. Lo made sense. Paula made nonsense and had since the moment he’d met her. Dating her was like constantly looking at a reflection in the mirror: see and be seen. Somewhere underneath the veneer, there had to be a real Paula with real feelings and maybe one who sometimes forgot to apply makeup.
All the same, he’d never seen that Paula, and near the end of the third week, he didn’t much care one way or the other.
Yet Lo cared about her, for reasons that utterly escaped him. So it was time to play devil’s advocate—time to dig into the dirty bedrock of their friendship and root out why Lo was so reluctant to even be with him.
Time, in fact, to finally kiss her and settle that part once and for all.
THE NEXT DAY Jed was waiting for me outside when I left for my weekly agency stint dressed for a hunker-down kind of day in an overly air-conditioned office.
“Hey,” he said softly.
I was staggered to see him, an even more casual Jed, in sunglasses, jeans and a navy T-shirt. Read muscular. Read unexpected.
“Hey, yourself. What are you doing here?”
“I’m kidnapping you. We’re skipping school today.”
“No. You are skipping school. I’m going to work. I work for a living. Unlike some people I know. And,” I added for good measure, “I’m on this Guy Diet…?”
“Oh, I know,” he said, making a motion with one arm. “Nevertheless, we’re playing hooky, both of us.”
Okay, kabuki-dance time. “I can’t.”
“You can. It’s ninety degrees and that is a beach-blanket-bingo day if ever there was one.”
“Jed…”
A long sleek black car drew up beside us.
“Ah, here’s Stecker with the car.”
The car? The car? And a driver? You couldn’t make a driver- on call in Manhattan seem like everyday ordinary.
“I keep a car,” he murmured. “Don’t use it much. Once in awhile.”
A car and driver on call? This was Jed’s real world, the one with designer women, elegant living, perfect manners, on-call limousines and limitless bank accounts.
I felt my body go hot, cold. Paula was more his world than I was. Paula was high maintenance; she could do the clothes, the social scene.
Paula was high tea. I was instant oatmeal.
“I realize,” Jed said. “You’ve got work to do, people to see, recipes to concoct, Paula to appease. Got it. Get in. You can call everyone en route. Paula doesn’t have to know a thing, if you must, but I still don’t get why.”
I didn’t get it, either. I didn’t get him. He wasn’t that kind of guy.
Or was he?
“Get in, Lo. I won’t bite.”
“Yes, but you do kiss.”
“I do—and I will. Though don’t let that scare you off.”
It scared the hell out of me. I got in. I called the agency. I put everything on hold. I couldn’t find a word to say as the driver maneuvered through the traffic over to the West Side Highway.
“Call the lawyer tomorrow,” he said at one point. “And don’t accept the first offer. He will tell you precisely what you need to do.”
“Okay.” My voice was stuck. I couldn’t find words. “Thanks.”
“Good. Now, wake up.”
“I can’t.” The car was air-conditioned. There was soft music pla
ying. The driver consulted a GPS device every now and again. “I thought you were more of an Easthampton kind of guy.”
“That goes to show,” Jed said. “You just never know.”
He meant, I didn’t know. “Where are we going?”
“I asked Stecker to find a beach. I’m assuming it will be a very nice beach where we can have a picnic lunch and where, in the course of events, I will finally kiss you.”
Stecker was heading toward Brooklyn. And my childhood play-grounds—the schoolyards, the city parks and now scruffy little beach areas down near Sheepshead Bay and farther out to Manhattan Beach. Oh my God. He could not have known—he couldn’t.
I didn’t say a word. When Stecker exited at Shore Parkway, that did me in. Jed was taking me home, and it was nowhere near Easthampton.
The beach parking lot was half full. Stecker drove us to one of the far gates and then took out a blanket and a backpack from the trunk.
Jed was watching me with that same intense gaze, then he nodded to Stecker and said to me, “Let’s do it.”
You never remember, as an adult, how the sun really beats down off the water, or the smells, the noise, how hot the sand is, the crunch your sneakers make as you make your way to the ideal place to sit and watch the water.
Those childhood memories, retrieved on a hot summer’s day when you’ve run away from responsibility, do make you feel like a child again.
Jed even had a collapsible umbrella. We set up just beyond the wet wash of the shoreline, spread out the blanket, removed our sneakers, rolled up our jeans.
Everything familiar, everything strange. Jed was a stranger. I knew nothing about him and it seemed as if he knew everything about me.
Or—this was the devil doing his homework and trying to tempt me again. I disregarded his comment about a kiss.
“You are scared to death of me,” Jed said suddenly in the midst of laying out the food, which had been neatly packed in the backpack.
“You think?”
“We’re just having a day at the beach.”
“Nooo—we’re avoiding work at the beach. And then there’s the small matter of a kiss.”
“Oh, don’t even think about it. It will come.”
“Jed—”
“What?”
“I’m serious.”
“Me, too. Try that salmon sandwich. It’s wonderful.”
I bit into the sandwich. I wanted to bite into him because he was so intractable. Instead I stared at the horizon where there were sailboats drifting along.
Jed rummaged in the backpack for a moment and then held up a tube. “Sunblock. Brace yourself because I’m going to touch you and put it on you and you’re going to rub it on me,” he said. Firmly.
I didn’t stop him as he levered himself onto his knees to get closer to me, or when he took one arm and began to massage the cream into my skin. And then my other arm, my calves, my neck. So serious, so intense, rubbing the cream all over every inch of exposed skin in the most erotic, irresistible way.
My insides melted. A whorl of desire slithered through my veins. I couldn’t stop it. Didn’t want to.
This was time off the books. We were playing hooky. Who would know? Who cared?
And then he touched my face. Tilted my head slightly toward his. Stroked the cream on my cheeks, my jaw, my chin, his eyes so deep, so blue, so serious, his touch not erotic at all, and yet—I caught my breath, I grasped his wrist to stop him, to help him, to—He met me halfway, he touched my lips, licked them, he cupped my cheek and he settled his mouth on mine for the barest instant and then pulled away, inches away…just to watch the spiraling pleasure in my eyes at that breath of a kiss.
He took my mouth again, fast this time, hard, deep, probing—the kind of kiss where time stops, arousal is instant and uncompromising—and there’s nowhere to go when you’re out in public with mothers and children all around you and you desperately want a room and some privacy.
Jed drew away reluctantly. “Your turn.” He could barely rasp out the words. He handed me the sunblock, but my hands were shaking so hard from the force of the desire I felt for him, I could barely grasp the tube.
“Now I get to kiss you?” I murmured, squeezing the cream into the palm of my hand.
“Only if you want to.”
I got to my knees and started at the back of his neck because I knew if I looked into his eyes, I would kiss him again even though I hadn’t absorbed what that first kiss meant.
I didn’t think the pure sense of his maleness would hit me in quite the way it did as I applied the sunblock. I was suddenly conscious of the texture and fairness of his skin, the shape of his body. I felt the raw power of him, even quiescent, under my tentative stroking fingers. And the sexual alertness just under the skin, and the thing in him that called out to me, I felt it as intensely as the sun.
Or it was a combination of that, the sand, the endless horizon, the taste of the forbidden, the feeling of liberation, or just the fantasy…
“Hey…” He twisted around to face me, pulled me down beside him, positioned the umbrella to shield us, and came in, slowly and deliberately for the kiss.
Now I felt like a teenager, hot, urgent and grinding in the dunes. No stopping me now.
I don’t know how long it was before Jed pulled away again, and when he did, he was in total control of his senses because he could actually speak.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of kissing from now on.”
Trying to behave like a sane adult, I said, “I think we have to stop now.” We couldn’t go all X-rated on a beach full of kids and moms.
“I don’t think so. Talk to me.”
“I can’t talk,” I whispered.
“That’s good.” Another long, drowning kiss. “I like kissing you.”
I made a sound.
“Still can’t talk? Excellent. Then you can’t protest and there can be more kissing. Because that’s how I envisioned today—a good lunch and lots of kissing.”
I made another sound but he stopped it with his lips. “You talk too much.”
I didn’t talk at all; he stonewalled every attempt with a kiss, deep kisses, tiny kisses, nipping kisses that made me squirm and my body liquefy with molten lust.
“I really like this kissing business,” he murmured against my lips at one point. “We have to do this more often.”
“You’re really okay with just kisses.”
“Absolutely.”
“Liar.”
“Maybe. Maybe I want more. At some point. Talk to me, Lo. Tell me why you’re so protective of Paula?”
That came clear out of the blue, and yet we were lying there in such intimacy, him braced on his elbows, me just to the side of him on my back, accessible for kisses and truth and dare, that whatever I said would feel like a confession.
I couldn’t avoid his eyes or that intense expression I always saw when he looked at me. I couldn’t tell him anything, especially my feelings about him.
“You can guess,” I temporized.
His expression hardened for a fleeting instant, almost so I thought I imagined it. “Okay. Here’s what you need to hear—I was never in love with her. She was most definitely not in love with me.”
“Maybe—” I swallowed the rest because he dropped a kiss on my lips. “Maybe she thinks she still is.”
“No.”
“Maybe she thinks you’re in love with her, and that you’ll come back.”
“Never.”
You couldn’t get more definite than that.
He waited for my next conclusion, which I chose not to air, and he finished it for me, “Maybe you don’t ever want her to think you stole something from her.”
I just closed my eyes because that was part of the truth, one of the things I had avoided coming to grips with. And I knew that Paula did think, on some level, I had taken him away, just because of that moment in the restaurant all those months ago.
“Maybe,” I whispered.
“
What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. What would you do?”
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” Jed said, wholly avoiding an answer, “we’re going to walk on the beach holding hands like we’re lovers, maybe get our feet wet, and then I’m going to make out with you all the way back to Manhattan.”
I shivered. All those miles, all those kisses. I didn’t think my body could take it.
We packed up and walked. The sky was impossibly blue, there was a slight breeze stirring the air and the sun was blazing hot.
Or maybe that was me, coming down from the ignition of Jed’s incendiary kisses. And we did make out all the way down the highway.
I didn’t let myself think, feel guilty, make assessments. I could barely walk when I got home, and I was swooning with gratitude that Paula wasn’t there.
And relieved that I and my secret were safe.
6
IT TOOK a hefty amount of willpower not to dwell on those kisses and the whole rest of the day. I distracted myself by calling the lawyer to discuss the contract, the details of which we painstakingly went over until we both were satisfied.
Then Jed called.
“I’m assuming after yesterday, you’ve explored all your options?”
“I’ll bet you were right in the lawyer’s office when we were talking.”
“I just want to know about exploring options.”
“Which ones did I not cover?”
“Mine,” Jed said soberly.
“And they are?”
“Dinner tonight and see what happens.”
This was so not fair. “It’s not the see-what-happens part that concerns me. It’s the what happened part. Like, yesterday.”
“Okay, that could happen. I definitely promise more kissing. There’s nothing wrong with that. I enjoyed that happening.”
“Nothing more can happen because I’m not exploring any more options…yet.” I added that tentatively because this was going someplace I hadn’t even thought was on the radar.
“You know, you did prove your point about the diet,” Jed countered.
“And now you want to prove yours,” I said back. Oh, my mouth should be fined for indecent exposure.
